


If You Never Start, You Never Have to Quit

by MistyBeethoven



Series: "Yes, I Really Am This Pathetic!" or "How to Say I Love You With a Story" [3]
Category: A Scanner Darkly (2006)
Genre: BBW, Chubby Girl, Drug Abuse, Drug Addiction, Drug Withdrawal, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Healing, Healing Sex, Hurt/Comfort, Loss of Virginity, Love, Love Stories, Love Triangles, Moving In Together, Names, Overweight, Past Drug Addiction, Past Drug Use, References to Drugs, Self-Insert, Virginity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-07
Updated: 2020-01-07
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:22:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22133236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MistyBeethoven/pseuds/MistyBeethoven
Summary: When Arctor is set free from New-Path after having handed over the blue flower which is harvested to create Substance D, he meets me at a restaurant and I take him home and care for him in the best way I can.However, finding myself in love with Bob Arctor, I soon discover that one can become as addicted to a person as they can to any form of drug.
Relationships: Bob Arctor/Me, Bruce/Me, Fred/Me, Robert Arctor/Me
Series: "Yes, I Really Am This Pathetic!" or "How to Say I Love You With a Story" [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1589944
Kudos: 8





	If You Never Start, You Never Have to Quit

**Author's Note:**

> The third in my series featuring Keanu Reeves' characters and myself.
> 
> Bob Arctor was hard to write even though he is near the top of my Keanu character crushes. I don't know how much he could recover from the effects of drug abuse. I hope he can. He is also rather quiet in some of his interactions with the other characters; most of his dialogue is inward or talking with co-workers. I wouldn't pretend to know what his inner monologues would be.
> 
> I only hope he would be able to play in a safer way someday. So this fic represents a possibility for that.
> 
> Also I have never been a waitress and I doubt that I would make a very good one. Having to serve all that food without sneaking a bit here and there would be torture for me. :/

I have to hold him sometimes in the dead of night. He starts shaking out of nowhere and he'll wake me up if I'm sleeping with the vibrations of the mattress we share from his trembling. More often than not, however, I'm awake anyway and staring at him almost expecting it like some animals can somehow sense an earthquake before it happens. I'll just simply wrap my arms around him and start to whisper into his ear some little thing to calm him down. It's sounds mostly or small words of even smaller comfort. When a song comes to my mind I will sing that to him sometimes. In this state, I'm never sure if he understands what I'm saying so I can tell him really anything. Often I tell him that I love him and it is true.

It's my tone which matters most.

When I do this, I can no longer tell if he's my friend, my lover or my child but I don't really care. 

I love him regardless of what he is.

That he is a former drug addict doesn't bother me at all.

* * *

Bruce...Robert...Bob...Fred. Those have all been his name at one point or another. Funny how when you love somebody a name can be everything or nothing. When I look at him, I don't think of any name for him. I only thing that he is the man that I love. I think more of the way he acts and speaks mixed with his looks; that's him. A name seems an incidental thing.

He came into the restaurant where I waitress. That's where I first met him. His hair was shaggy and he had on his face something that was caught halfway between stubble and an actual beard. He caught my interest immediately because of everything that he was: looks and that subtle something that surrounds somebody that you can't see but you can feel. I liked the way he looked; I liked the way he moved and when he spoke to me he was kind.

I'm overweight and I haven't always been shown kindness so I always appreciate it. Of course, maybe his mind was so broken he hasn't really taken that aspect about me in. I don't know what he sees. Sometimes things that are really there; sometimes things that aren't. I just know that he tipped me that very first visit the same as the other thinner waitresses get tipped by the men that they serve and that doesn't always happen.

By the third time he came in, I definitely had a crush on him.

I'm not being honest...I had a crush on him the moment he walked through the door. Usually attraction works like that. We love whom God wants us to love the moment that we see them. I don't know what he thought about me because he's quiet and broken and his words are sometimes stilted or confused while at other times coherency slips out seeming almost like an accident.

This much he told me: he used to be a government agent, undercover. He may have had two little girls and a wife. And he used to have friends.

Oh and that he was hooked on Substance D. That explained a lot. Explained everything actually. That was the big drug that was taking over a few years back. Everybody was practically using it, myself excluded thankfully. Only when an undercover guy went in did they find that the flower used in the drug's creation was being harvested at New Path, the place meant to rehabilitate Substance D abusers.

Big laugh there.

Bigger laugh that Bob Arctor was the man they used to do it all without him even knowing it. I pierced this together from him and the information I found out when I snooped around.

Yeah. It's a big joke. The type only the Devil laughs at.

They used Bob Arctor essentially and then threw him away. I learned that much too. And when I found him muttering to himself one day at the restaurant that they had cut his salary altogether and he no longer had a place to stay, I invited him to come and live with me.

"Are you certain?" he asked as if he was an outsider looking in and thought it to be a bad choice that I was making. 

I nodded. I didn't see the harm in it. He's off the drug, I had thought. He was a nice guy if a little incoherent sometimes. And I couldn't bear to think of him out there and winding up back on that junk again and killing what few cells work and that he's managed to put back together again. That's a miracle in itself.

Substance D is still out there, you see. They couldn't get rid of it all, no matter what or whom they sacrificed. They think they are doing God's work: that He would be well pleased at the methods which they use.

There's another joke for the Devil.

* * *

Taking Robert home, I soon learned that I had sinned against my own rule regarding addiction.

You know, I never start doing anything addictive out of the fear that I won't be able to stop when I need to. And things that are addictive usually deplete you because they can never love you back. You just keep giving and they just keep taking because there is nothing inside of them to give back. So drugs, booze, cigarettes...I always stayed away from them.

Because if you never start you never have to worry about quitting.

I should have remembered that with Bob Arctor before I invited him into my home and my heart.

I shouldn't have started...because now I don't know how to quit and he's too damaged to ever love me back.

* * *

He slept on the couch at first. I gave him a pillow and a blanket and felt guilty for keeping the bedroom. But I only have the one so I told myself it was okay. He found himself in my bed one night anyway and I didn't have the heart to throw him out. He didn't try anything at the start. Just lay there next to me. That was when I'd wake up to him shaking and eventually got to the stage where I could soothe him without feeling awkward.

Sex...well that came later and I feel as if that's really just comforting him in a more _drastic_ fashion.

The first time we made love wasn't really planned. He just started to kiss me one night and I let him and then he was touching me and kissing me in other places and I let him do that too as I eventually did the same to him also. Our first time was my first time. It would probably have been something that my mother wouldn't have been too pleased with, my giving myself in that way to a former Substance D user. But I didn't care. I loved him and that was all that mattered to me.

However, when he climaxed it was with another woman's name on his lips and not mine and that _did_ matter. Sort of, at least. Her name was Donna and I lay on the bed afterwards feeling sore between my legs but really more hurt inside of my heart. I was going to tell him to get out of my bed, the tears falling from my eyes but when I turned his head was resting on the pillow with his eyes blank and yet he was crying too. He looked so sad that I didn't have the heart. Instead, I just rolled my chubby body closer to his beautiful hulking frame and held him, wishing that I was this Donna, whomever she was.

The next time he wanted to, I tried to stop him because I didn't want to make love to someone who would just be picturing somebody else instead of me but he was so damn insistent and desperate that I let him. At least, I was prepared for him saying her name now although the thought that I was stealing a stranger's orgasms didn't make me feel all that great.

* * *

It made me even worse when I saw her today. Or at least caught a glimpse of her. She was beautiful and thin and walked by the restaurant. I heard him say her name, as he sat at the table, and I watched him watching her as she went by and I watched her pass by too. I looked at my belly and I felt like dying so I ran into the washroom and started to cry.

Bob was the one to come and get me.

I recognized his shoes from under the door of my weeping place in the stall.

"This is the ladies room, Bob" I told him past a sniffle, more concerned that he may not know that and wind up in trouble and thrown out of the restaurant permanently.

"I know," he replied.

"Why are you in here?" I asked.

"Because I was worried about you," he stated. 

Feeling my heart give a little glow, I quickly grabbed the end of the toilet paper roll and ripped a few sheets off and dabbed my eyes.

When I came out, he looked at me and I thought he noticed that my eyes were sore and red and that I'd been crying. He touched my face and asked, "Time to go home?"

I gave him a closed mouth smile before I wrapped my arms around the stomach I love so much.

* * *

Tonight, after the loving, he's lying on his back when he suddenly says, "They docked my pay for getting addicted to it and using it for personal use...did I...was that wrong? Could I have done it differently?"

I stare at the cracks in the ceiling but I don't need much time to think about my reply. "Well they had you use it and it twists your mind. How were you supposed to know when you were addicted? How were you still able to think about it rationally? I place white paint down on an easel. I add just a touch of black to it and it isn't white anymore...it's gray. It's been changed and should I blame it when it's no longer white and I was the one to do it?"

I think he may understand that. Then again, he may not. I roll over and place my head on his naked chest, liking the way our skin feels as it touches and the scent of him filling my nostrils.

"You're brain was changed by Substance D," I say plainly. "You didn't know what the hell you were doing after a point. So...don't blame yourself."

"Thank you," he says softly and holds one strand of my brown hair in between his fingers. It's so curled at the end that it resembles a spring and he bounces it up and down like one.

"Boing, boing, boing," I say to accompany the movement and he laughs and kisses the top of my head.

I kiss the skin between his breasts and let him play with my hair as I fall asleep, using his chest as a pillow.

* * *

"Hello Bob," I hear a voice say. I look up to see Donna approaching my roommate as he sits at his usual table.

"Hello Donna," he replies and then she sits down at the booth and they talk.

As I serve the orders, I watch them out of the corner of my eyes. When the woman breaks down, I feel sorry for her even though I feel as if the floor is opening up below me and about to swallow me so I can wind up in the hell that I'm feeling. I see Bob take her hand and squeeze it gently. I rush into the kitchen where the Chef promptly asks if I'm okay. I peek out of the doorway to see the lovely Donna rising to give Robert Arctor a hug as he continues to sit at the booth. I am in great pain but I hope to God that he realizes what is happening. He once again takes her hand, and arm this time also, and squeezes them again.

I close the door and leave them be.

When I force myself to leave the kitchen, I don't expect to find Bob there so it is a shock when I see him still sitting in the same place. As I enter the room, he spots me and smiles. He grabs his empty glass and hits it on the table.

"Crummy service this place has," he jokes. "What do I have to do to get a lousy refill?"

"There are other waitresses," I say softly, noting that he seems more aware than I have ever seen him before.

"I'm only interested in one of them," Robert Arctor says. "So how about it? What do I need to do for a refill? I have a few interesting suggestions. When we go home I'll show them to you."

* * *

He kisses me after it is done and rolls over onto his side. Feeling his seed, warm and dripping out and on to my plump thighs, I focus on it so I won't be too sad when he says Donna's name again. I know that it must be coming after their meeting at the restaurant. This session of love being the most passionate that he has ever given only proves it to me. I only have a few more nights with him and then he will go to her. But if I can focus on the fact that his come is about to dry on my legs for this one night and not her's then maybe I will be okay. 

Then when I am forced to quit him, I can remember how it felt.

Moving closer to me, he holds me closely and buries his head in my brown curls.

"Erin," he whispers lovingly.

"What did you say?" I ask in disbelief, not able to believe my ears, even though his mouth was close enough to one that I felt his breath entering it; as if my name was inside of me just as _he_ was only seconds ago.

"Erin," he repeats and squeezes me with more affection than I could have ever wished for.

Yes. Names don't really matter much when you love somebody.

But, on the other hand, they can mean everything when you finally hear the man you love whisper your own after he has made love to you and you alone.

* * *

Me rotoscoped because I am that pathetic and I love Bob Arctor enough to want to see myself in that world:


End file.
